Don’t forget you have until midnight (MT) on November 26, 2008 to enter my contest to win 12 cartons of Blue Bunny ice cream!

There’s all sorts of classic children’s books that feature bunnies:

• Goodnight Moon
• Pat the Bunny (Touch and Feel Book)
• Guess How Much I Love You
• The Runaway Bunny
• Beatrix Potter The Complete Tales (Potter)
• The Velveteen Rabbit

But this sort of bunny tale is about a third grade teacher, Mr. Done,  who has 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny.

He writes:

I fix staplers that won’t staple and zippers that won’t zip, and I poke pins in the orange caps of glue bottles that will not pour. I hand out papers and pencils and stickers and envelopes for newly pulled teeth. I know the difference between Austria and Australia.

I plan lessons while shaving, showering, driving, eating, and sleeping. I plan lessons five minutes before the bell rings. I know what time it is when the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the nine. I say the r in library. I do not say the w in sword.

I put on Band-Aids and winter coats and school plays. I know they will not understand the difference between your and you’re. I know they will write to when it should be too. I say “Cover your mouth,” after they have coughed on me.

I am a teacher.

Continue Reading »

When I was asked why music and arts programs are a vital part of our children’s education, I remembered a video I recently saw of Barack Obama speaking to a school group in Wallingford, PA:

Obama summed up my feelings quite nicely:

Part of what arts education does is it teaches people to see through each other’s eyes. It teaches us to respect and understand people who are not like us. That makes us better citizens and makes our democracy work better.

What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

He’s talking about empathy, and Obama’s not the only one advocating using art education programs to do this. In a 2006 Lancet essay, Development of children’s creativity to foster peace, Dr. Ashfaq Ishaq wrote:

The arts can aid a child’s holistic development, especially empathy… A RAND study noted that the communicative and personal nature of creative expression, accentuated through collective arts activities, can forge social bonds while supporting identity formation and cultural transmission.

By teaching empathy through music and art programs, we give our children the skills to succeed and live peacefully in a diverse world.

Continue Reading »

Nathan’s class is learning about the Native Americans and has to do a report on their favorite American Indian tribe. Nathan liked the North Eastern tribes, so we chose to study the Iroquois, a group of six tribes located in New York State, Ontario, Canada, and Wisconsin.

Research and books

The Internet is full of junk when it comes to Native American topics. Since the Wikipedia section on the Iroquois is locked for “vandalism,” I questioned the information there. Luckily, our local library has a healthy selection of books on Native American culture just for children. We checked out:

• The Iroquois (Native American Histories) by Charlotte Wilcox for children ages nine to 12. Nathan’s currently reading this during his 15-minutes mandatory reading homework time. And he’s using a feather as a book mark, go figure.
• The Iroquois And Their History (We the People) by Genevieve St. Lawrence. Another book for kids who are reading at a third to sixth grade level.

The report assignment

As part of their project they have to do an oral report and artwork or a craft of some kind. My husband had the brilliant idea that Nathan make some Native American food to serve his class. I liked this idea because it was relatively inexpensive and I didn’t have to store a diorama after the project was over. I thought that Nathan’s classmates would enjoy eating Native American food, too.

I checked out another children’s book, Native North American Foods and Recipes by Bobbie Kalman. Since this book had more facts than recipes I also reserved two adult Native American cookbooks:

• Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions by Fernando and Marlene Divina and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. This book is in traditional cookbook format with chapters broken up into appetizers, soups, meats, birds, game, breads, desserts and beverages.
• Spirit of the Harvest: North American Indian Cooking by Beverly Cox and Martin Jacobs. This cookbook is divided into geographic regions, so we found this more helpful for the project. Nathan and I decided to make maple syrup candy and Algonquian Maple Popcorn Balls. Yes, the Algonquians are not part of the Iroquois Confederacy. However, all Northeastern Indians had access to corn and maple syrup, so I think we can fudge it. I’m sure all native Northeastern peoples did some sort of popcorn and maple dish.

Continue Reading »

A few weeks ago I wrote Learn how to win 100,000 Box Tops for Education for your school! Yes, we’d all know the odds of winning a contest – pretty slim. Luckily, there’s another way to earn money for school – shopping in the Box Tops for Education Marketplace.

I wish I had know about this before I shopped online at some of my favorite merchants like Kohl’s, Staples and Target. Oriental Trading, Cabella’s, Home Depot and over 60 other popular merchants are there. It’s also a great site to do your back to school shopping at, since merchants like Wal-Mart and Lands End are offering special deals until the end of August.

If you want to shop through the site to earn money for your school, you must register online through the Box Tops website and designate a school to support. Second, you must start your online shopping at the Box Tops for Education Marketplace in order for Box Tops to credit purchases to your school. Finally, be sure that “cookies” are enabled on your Internet browser. The use of cookies is necessary to accurately track your purchases from participating stores.

Friends, relatives, and businesses can shop to support any school, whether it’s in the next state or across the country. All they need to do is sign up online at the Box Tops website with your child’s school’s name and state or ZIP code. Once registered, every qualifying purchase they make through the Box Tops Marketplace will earn cash for your school.

For more information see the Box Tops for Education Marketplace FAQs.

I have a profile at Box Tops for Education from a few years back, and have a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card*, a $10 gift card to Land’s End and a $20 Target gift card sitting on my desk. Looks like I have some shopping to do!

(Complimentary of RocketXL. Now before you say, “Well you were paid to promote this!” Well, true. However, I’m happy to get the word out about another way to raise money for my children’s school while doing the stuff moms normally do, like shopping online. I think most of us would rather raise money this way than buy cookie dough, you know?)

I’m going to be chatting LIVE on with Kristen Chase on the Motherhood Uncensored Show about books and activities to prepare your little ones for their first year of school, whether it’s preschool, pre-K, or kindergarten. The show is on Wednesday, July 30 at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT. You can listen to it live at blogtalkradio or you can call in at 646-915-8634 and chat with us.

If you missed it, you can listen to the archived show here.

For a lot of kids the first day of school is scary. Reading books and talking about school can help calm their fears. Here are some books and activities you can do with your child to get the discussion started.

Books

• Kevin Goes to School (Kane/Miller) – Belgian author Liesbert Slegers’s character Kevin and his friend Ali help make the transition to school less frightening.
• Something for School (Available in August 2008 from Kane/Miller Book Publishers) It’s the first day of kindergarten, and Yoon’s new teacher and classmates mistake her for a boy. Oh no! This book is about starting school and making friends instead of assumptions. By Korean author Hyun Young Lee.
• Little School (Kane/Miller) Australian author Beth Norling gives readers a realistic account of preschool life so your preschooler knows exactly what to expect when they start.
• Tibili: The Little Boy Who Didn’t Want to Go to School (Kane/Miller) French author Marie Léonard set a story of a reluctant first-time school-goer in Africa. Also available in Spanish and French.
•  First Day Jitters (Charlesbridge) Author Julie Danneberg’s character Sarah Jane is scared and doesn’t want to start over at a new school. With prodding from her father, Sarah Jane reluctantly goes off to school. She is quickly befriended by Mrs. Burton, who helps calm her nerves. Also available in Spanish.
• Kindergarten Countdown (Random House) By Anna Jane Hays and illustrated by Lind Davick. A little girl named Lucy counts off the days by naming what she’ll do in kindergarten, what she’ll wear, and what she’ll learn. (Read my review of Kindergarten Countdown.)

For more book ideas see my post Back to school book roundup.

Activities

Here are some links to articles that can help you prepare your child for that scary first day of school:

• First-day jitters: starting preschool by Isadora Fox, Ilisa Cohen and Diane Debrovner of Parents.com
• Cures for First-Day Jitters – by the American School Counselor Association
• Preparing for the First Days of School by Ellen Booth Church of Scholastic Parent
• 10 Steps for a First Trip to School from Scholastic Parent
• Click here for some school lunch ideas.

All you have to do is enter the Kimberly-Clark Rock Your School Sweepstakes!

Kimberly-Clark, the folks who make Huggies and Kleenex, are working with Box Tops for Education to give parents a chance to win 100,000 Bonus Box Tops, plus an exclusive concert featuring Radio Disney star Jordan Pruitt for their child’s school.

If you have school-aged kids, you know that Box Tops for Education is a program dedicated to helping schools raise money to develop programs, purchase books, and buy school supplies. I’m always on the lookout for those little labels on the products we buy, and have been collecting them all summer. Now that Lucie is starting kindergarten in August, I’ll have two classrooms to collect them for.

Last year our school’s teachers earned enough to buy a die-cutting machine for classroom projects – around $350. Imagine winning this prize for child’s school – 100,000 Bonus Box Tops are equivalent to $10,000! Here are some of they could buy with that money:

• 20 wireless-ready laptops.
• Enough No. 2 pencils so that when laid end to end they would stretch across the length of more than 145 football fields.
• An educational class trip for 20 students including airfare, hotel accommodations and museum admission.

Wow! Here are some of the details. To learn more go to the Rock Your School Sweepstakes FAQs page. Or you can click here to see the official rules.

• If you are a legal resident of the United States,18 years or older, a parent/legal guardian of a child in grades K-8, and your child attends a school located within the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, you are eligible to enter this sweepstakes.
• Entries are limited to one entry, per person, per day, with a maximum of 80 entries per person throughout the sweepstakes
• Parents or legal guardians of students in grades K through 8 can enter the sweepstakes daily June 28 through September 15 online at www.RockBacktoSchool.com. Winners will be selected at random from all eligible entries on or around September 22.

Look for Box Tops on specially marked packages of participating Kimberly-Clark brands like Huggies, Cottonelle and Kleenex along with many other participating products.

For more information on how to collect box tops, you can visit BoxTops4Education.com. Check out the Box Tops for Education recipe page, too.

From Charlesbridge Publishing comes, Sneeze! by Alexandra Siy and Dennis Kunkel. For fourth through six graders, Sneeze! features nine kids discovering nine different reasons for sneezing including allergens, dust mites, bright lights (a reflex) and viruses. The book features full-color pictures of sneeze-inducing irritatants, human nerves and neurons, all 400 to 222,220 times larger than life.

Since the book shows cells close up, a fun activity to go along with Sneeze! is Make Your Own Cell Cookies.

My son Nathan did this activity in his second grade science class. (Younger children could do this with some adult supervision and older children will enjoy it as well.) The kids in Nathan’s class loved this activity because of the hands-on approach to learning science by using food, and most importantly eating their creations after the activity was completed.

Make Your Own Cell Cookies

Materials:

1. Large sugar cookies (one per child)
2. Cake decorating frosting (at least 4 different colors)
3. Cake decorating candies (at least 3 different kinds) – good choices include licorice, M&Ms, small marshmallows, red hots, Jolly Ranches, etc. Nuts and dried fruit can be used, but beware of food allergies!

Activity:

1. Review plant and animal cells, organelles, and organelle functions. A great website for this is Cells for Kids, which has lots of links to similar activities
2. Explain to the children that they will be making their own “cell” cookie.
3. Each child should choose at least six organelles to create on his/her cookie using the frosting and decorations provided.
4. Allow children to be creative. After they finish their cell cookies, have each child identify the organelles on his/her cell cookie and explain their functions.
5. After they’re done, they can eat their cell cookie. Delicious!